Ghost Story
by Smileyfax
Summary: Upon her move to Lawndale, Daria meets someone who used to live at her new house...and still occupies it.
1. Chapter 1

Daria sighed, expelling all the air from her lungs as she plopped down perpendicular on the bed of the Morgendorffers' new house, legs dangling off, as she reflected how terrible the first week at Lawndale High School had been.

They had just moved from Lawndale into the house given them by Helen's mother, Grandma Barksdale. Her mother Helen was surprised (and not a little grateful) at the gift, as her sister Rita was typically the favored child. However, Helen had discovered that it used to belong to Grandma Barksdale's sister, who moved out after her daughter ran away. Remaining uninhabited for nearly 50 years, the house had needed serious renovations. Cue the Morgendorffers having to remain in Highland several months longer than anticipated; after all, they didn't have the money to both renovate the house AND afford months of hotel service, and Helen was too affixed on her mother actually giving her the second-hand house to turn it down.

On her very first day, Daria had been shunted off into some cockamamie self-esteem class by the overzealous incompetent excuse for a school psychiatrist. The teacher of the class (pulling double duty from his position as English teacher) was, from what Daria had seen, badly in need of a little self-esteem himself. Briefly, there had been a ray of hope in the girl who sat next to her, but when they had walked home and she saw the house Daria was living in she made some lame excuse and left. She had spent the entire rest of the week giving Daria the cold shoulder, casting the occasional fearful glance at her. "Whatever," Daria muttered, recalling the baffling actions. It wasn't the first time she had been inexplicably ditched.

The worst part was her sister's behavior. Out of the blue, the sneak had gotten up to her old tricks in regards to sabotaging her homework. She hadn't done it in years, so it came to a surprise to Daria when Mr. DeMartino handed back the homework assignment she had turned in marked up with enough red ink that she was convinced he had accidentally gotten blood all over it somehow. The block letters at the top of her page filled her with incredible shame: "NOT UP TO YOUR IN-CLASS STANDARDS. VERY DISAPPOINTING." She considered it a sign of how poorly the rest of her classmates must do in class if he held her to a high standard on the third day in.

She had yet to catch Quinn doing it, of course, and she had somehow managed to do it several more times behind Daria's back, no matter how well-hid or well-secured she had made her homework. Hiding it under a loose floorboard didn't work. Neither did slicing a small hole in her mattress and sticking it in there. She had even once left out decoy homework, burying the real stuff in a coffee can in one corner of the backyard after midnight (while Quinn was breaking curfew to go out on a date). The coffee-can homework had been sabotaged, while the decoy remained untouched. Sure, she could have just done her homework at school and left it in her locker, but it was the principle of the matter, damnit!

Tonight, she had a trap ready for her younger sister. She had completed her homework, but rigged it so that it connected to a string. Any messing with the homework would tug the string, which would in turn ring a bell, prompting Daria to leap up, shout "Aha!" and snap a picture of Quinn caught red-handed before she could react. From there, she could leverage it as being a serious piece of blackmail, or perhaps just hand the picture over to her parents and watch the fireworks that unfolded. She would have to remember to bring the popcorn beforehand, though...

All that was left to do at the moment was wait. She was breathing slowly and evenly, giving the illusion of sleep, and in fact she had almost fallen under more than once. She had managed to catch herself each time, though, giving herself a hearty bite to the lip or inner cheek to bring her back into focus. The waiting was starting to get to her; out of the corner of her eye, she could see her alarm clock, with it reading just a few minutes until 2 AM. She was starting to worry that Quinn had taken the night off, or worse, had concluded her campaign of sabotage, thus depriving Daria of a means of retaliation (at least, one that she didn't have to make an effort for).

Her worries were for naught. The bell rang.

Daria sprang up. She shouted, "Aha!" She took a picture with the instant camera she had been clutching for several hours now.

The translucent young woman who was decidedly NOT Quinn looked up in mild surprise, then shook her head and turned back to Daria's homework, a sly smirk on her face.

The translucent young woman looked eerily similar to Daria.

"Wh-who the hell are you?" Daria asked.

The translucent young woman jerked her head sharply in Daria's direction. "You can see me?" she said, mouth agape. Daria slowly nodded. "Nobody - NOBODY - has ever seen me before. And I've been here since 1958. My name is Maura..." Her face twisted into an ugly snarl. "And I am your DOOM!"

XXXXXXXXXX

This is something of a spiritual sequel to Anthony DeMartino Just Wants To Have Fun, in that there really is a ghost in the House of Bad Grades (just like how Metalmouth reallly existed in ADJWTHF).

More will be revealed in later chapters!

Special thanks to LadieT and InvisibleDan for coming up with names for Maura, as well as one character that hasn't shown up yet.

Also, I'm uber dissatisfied with the title, so if you can think of something better, do let me know! :) 


	2. Chapter 2

Daria flinched away from the pronouncement, but the attack never came. After a moment, Daria looked back, only to see Maura just standing there. "Wait. You're not going to kill me?"

Maura scoffed. "Kill you? Far too merciful." She gestured to Daria's homework. "I'm going to ensure that you fail high school, thus dooming you to stay in Lawndale forever!"

Daria made a face. "I'd rather be eviscerated, if it's all the same to you." She frowned. "Wait. Why do you want to, uh, doom me?"

The ghostly teen walked towards the window (making her appear bisected, as the bed was in the way, and she didn't walk on it so much as through it) and pointed out into the backyard. "That THING," she spat out contemptuously.

Daria looked out to where she was pointing. It was the barbecue pit that had come with the house. Her father had been rather enthusiastic about it. "Look, I can understand if you're a vegetarian, but what does that have to do with me?"

"The barbecue pit is only part of the problem. I was buried alive beneath it."

Daria blanched. "Uh. That sucks."

"Tell me about it."

"So, who buried you?"

Maura's eyebrows rose up in surprise. "Oh, no, no, it was nothing as sinister as that. You see, it used to be our family's fallout shelter..." Daria listened intently as she spun the tale of how one night, she ventured out into the shelter to get some peace and quiet to study for college admissions tests. She slept in the shelter overnight, and the next day found herself unable to escape - and without a can opener, to boot.

"At first, I thought that the Reds had finally dropped the A-bomb, so at least my family would be waiting for me in hell," Maura groused. "But then when I finally killed myself -" She noticed Daria looking askance at her. "Oh, like you would sit around and wait to die of hunger for over a month with the belief that the entire world above had just been wiped out by an atomic holocaust. After that, I rose from the ground to find that my family had installed a FUCKING BARBECUE PIT OVER THE SHELTER!" Furious, she pounded on the wall.

"Daria, SOME of us are trying to get beauty sleep!" Quinn shouted from the other side of the wall.

Maura stood there in silence, panting with exertion (nevermind that she didn't have any muscles or lungs to exert in the first place). Daria asked, "So, you want to leave Lawndale. Haven't you tried?"

The ghost nodded grimly. "I have, damnit! I've tried leaving in every possible direction - north, south, left, right, up, even down. Every time, it's like an invisible force-field made of rubber. I push a little, it pushes back a little. I rocket into it full speed, I get bounced back halfway across town. The epicenter seems to be my earthly remains." She gestured again to the barbecue pit outside.

"This is going to sound really stupid," Daria said. "But...go into the light?"

"I never saw any damned light," Maura muttered. Daria realized she was actually holding back tears.

"Uh..." Daria reached up and hesitantly tried to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder (it passed through). "There, there," she said lamely.

Maura threw her arms around Daria and began sobbing. Daria winced, both at the semi-physical contact, and at the cold sensation. (At least her nightwear wouldn't get soaked with tears, being that they were spectral). "I hate this town more than ANYTHING! I WANT OUT!"

"Well, we know where your body's buried..." Daria pointed out. "Maybe if we have your remains consecrated and buried (or something along those lines), you'll...uh...move on."

Maura withdrew from Daria, a look of wonder on her face. Then, she embraced Daria again, squealing with joy. "Yes! That could work! Oh, thank you...uh..."

"Daria."

"Daria!"

Daria rolled her eyes. You would think she would have caught her name in the midst of homework sabotage. 


	3. Chapter 3

"Excuse me?" Helen had a skeptical eyebrow cocked.

Daria repeated herself. "I think cousin Mara didn't run away. I think she's buried beneath the barbecue pit out back. I think we should dig it up."

Her mother put hands on hips. "And what exactly made you come to this conclusion?"

"Um. I heard it from the kids at school." It was a lame excuse, but it was nominally true. She had asked several of her classmates if there were any unsavory rumors about her house, and most of them seemed to know about the House of Bad Grades. Just like that, all capitalized and everything. It explained Jane's ditching of Daria, at least, but one thing bothered her: how in the hell did everybody at school know about it if nobody had actually occupied the house since the Barksdale branch had moved out?

"So, the 'kids at school' told you that your cousin is buried in our back yard?"

Daria nodded. "In an old bomb shelter." She felt like a total ass, even though she knew she was right.

"Wait," Quinn said, looking up from her new issue of Waif. "Are you talking about the House of Bad Grades?"

"The what?" Helen said, unaware of their home's status.

"It's this urban legend or whatever about a ghost girl who sabotages kids' homework so that they never graduate high school or something." Quinn's eyes widened. "Wait. Is THIS the House of Bad Grades? Oh my GOD!" Quinn stormed upstairs, presumably to start hurriedly packing.

Helen sighed. "Now look what you did, Daria, you panicked your sister for no good reason." She shook her head. "I'd expected you to have more sense than to listen to ghost stories, Daria."

She turned to her father, but he had ignored the entire conversation, spending most waking hours doing nothing but stare lovingly at the barbecue pit. Daria loved steak just as much as the next carnivorous woman, but it was starting to get a little ridiculous.

Daria glanced at Maura (who had been standing there the whole time, the rest of the Morgendorffers oblivious to her presence), gave an apologetic shrug, and together they returned to her room.

"That went about as well as I expected," Daria sighed upon closing the door.

Maura nodded. "Your father reminds me a lot of Dad. I mean, I didn't know about the barbecue pit until after the whole death thing, but watching him as a ghost, he was totally ga-ga over it."

Daria hummed. "Maybe it's a cursed barbecue pit. It ensnares the souls of men with promise of delicious meats."

Maura giggled. "And it binds to the Earth the souls of all those unfortunate enough to die of barbecue-related deaths!"

After amusing themselves with further discussion along those lines, Daria grew contemplative. "So, all the kids at school I talked to seemed to know of you, or at least your grade-zapping reputation. Yet this house has been unoccupied since the early 60s. How is that?"

"Oh." Maura blushed - or at least, did the spectral equivalent. "Well, after my family left, it got boring just sitting around in here...so I went exploring."

"Exploring?"

"Okay, okay, I went into other peoples' houses! Happy?" She stuck a translucent tongue out at Daria. "I would poke around, see who the weirdoes in my town were, and whenever I found other kids..."

"You sabotaged their homework."

Maura nodded.

"But how did they link those activities to this house?"

"I...might have signed some of the homework. All the homework." At Daria's stare, she continued. "I might have signed it with my address."

Daria rolled her eyes. "How many visitors did you get?"

"Oh, one or two every few months."

"And none of them ever saw you."

"Yeah. Like I said, you're the first person to actually see me since I went underground." She rubbed her chin. "I wonder why that is."

"I've been wondering about that too. It's not like I'm inclined to see all ghosts - something like 90 billion human beings have lived and died in the species' history, and it seems likely that at least a few of them would have stuck around as ghosts. I would suggest it has something to do with our shared DNA, but then, your family would have been able to see you."

"Yeah," Maura agreed. "I tried to contac them numerous times - I wasn't so hot at interacting with solid stuff back then, so they just attributed all their moved stuff to one another, all the sounds to the house just settling, and so on. They moved out after Millie went off to college." She made a disgusted face.

"Millie?"

"My sister. After that is when I had the idea to mess with everybody's homework." A rueful grin was on her face. "Too bad I hadn't thought of it before Millie left."

They sat quietly for a few minutes. "Do you miss your family? Your sister?"

Maura shook her head. "No, not really. I suppose they must be dead by now, mom and dad at least. Millie might still be around..." She let out a small laugh. "I'd love to see little miss popularity a wrinkled old biddy." She then sighed. "I do miss my boyfriend a lot. I wonder if Tony ever got married..."

Daria's eyebrows shot up. "Tony?"

"Yeah, Tony DeMartino. The gentlest, dreamiest boy in school." A wide smile spread on her face. "And the things he'd do when we parked!"

"Um. I don't know how to tell you this..." 


	4. Chapter 4

The look on Maura's face was reminiscent of the look a person got upon smelling a toilet which had remained unflushed for several weeks straight. "That's...Tony?" she asked, disbelieving.

"That's him. Bulging eye, graying temples, contempt for everything around him," Daria confirmed. She was standing just outside the classroom, Maura poking her head through the (closed) door to take another look at her old love.

"I'm not sure I'll be able to continue dating him," Maura finally concluded.

"What gave you that conclusion? Besides the decades of age difference, and the part where he can't see or hear you because you died." Maura pulled her head out from the door and stuck her tongue out at Daria.

"Well, I don't want to just leave him hanging, after all these years. Get in there, Daria."

Daria looked up from her examination of the floor between her boots. "What?"

"Get in there and tell him I said goodbye."

"Just how the hell am I supposed to do that?"

"God, am I supposed to do everything?"

"You could do that thing where you write on a paper in front of him."

Maura sighed. "Look, Daria, I've tried that before. With other people, I mean. Without fail, every one of them turns into a gibbering moron, screaming and running and pissing themselves." A thoughtful smirk appeared on her face. "Though watching Tony do that might be a laugh..."

Daria sighed. "Look, Tony...Mr. DeMartino...is the only teacher around here I have a smidgen of respect for, and...nnh...seeing him pee himself would wipe that out."

"I'm glad you agree!" her ghostly cousin beamed. "Now get in there!" She began pushing Daria, who was compelled to move forward, as the sensation of a ghost hand inside her guts gave her the willies.

Mr. DeMartino looked up from grading papers. "Ms. MORgendorffer! If you're wondering about your HOMEwork, I'm GLAD to tell you that you've shown a marked imPROVEment!"

Daria glanced back at Maura, who had the good sense to look sheepish. "Um, that's good, but that's not what I'm here to talk about."

Mr. DeMartino nodded, and leaned back expectantly. Daria gulped and scrambled through her brain for what, exactly, she was going to say.

"Um. Did you know a Maura Barksdale?" she finally started. THAT got her teacher's attention. He leaned forward in the chair, a look of surprise on his face. "She was...uh...kind of my cousin."

"Was?" All the sternness had fled his voice. "So she's dead, then?"

Daria nodded. "She died in 1958. It turns out her remains are...uh, were interred on the grounds of her house. She was accidentally buried alive."

DeMartino looked away from Daria, staring out towards the back of the classroom, at the windows in the rear wall, and outside them. Daria figured he was staring back over forty years' time. She could see tears welling up in his eyes.

Maura walked through the chalkboard and knelt beside her one-time love.

"It turns out that her last thoughts were of you," Daria added, pretending her voice wasn't hoarse from the emotion of the moment.

Maura put her arms around the teacher and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek. In surprise, he put his hand up and touched the skin, then turned to Daria, bewilderment on his face. "How did..." He shook his head and blinked repeatedly, clearing his eyes of any excess moisture. "Thank you, Daria," he said, uncharacteristically referring to her by her first name.

Daria left without saying anything else, and found Maura waiting again out in the hall.

"You know what this means?" Maura asked. Daria shook her head. "I'm single again!"

Daria squinted at the ghost. "You know, you may resemble me a lot, but you take more after Quinn." A thought occurred to Daria. "How come you didn't sabotage Quinn's homework?"

Maura rolled her eyes. "You've known her for her whole life, and you have to ask me that?"

Daria nodded. "Right, you didn't have to bother helping her get bad grades. Anyway, it doesn't matter if you're single or not, because we have to think about how to get your body consecrated."

Maura thought long and hard for all of five seconds. "Boys!"

Daria bit her lip, hoping the little pain would give her patience. "Maura, I appreciate that you might have some urges after four decades, but -"

"No, silly," Maura chastised. "I meant we just get some boys to dig me out for you!"

"And how do you propose we do that?"

"Oh, poor Daria," Maura said in a sing-song voice. "Doesn't know how to flirt with boys."

"Hey!" Daria growled. "I can flirt just fine, thank you very much. Are you aware of the mental acuity of, well, every guy in this school? Of the two guys who are even in my league intellectually, one of them is seeing someone and the other one is Upchuck."

Maura raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Upchuck? Hmm. But Daria, you're missing the point. You're not going to MARRY these boys, you just need them to dig you a little itty bitty hole." She smiled faux-seductively. "If they happen to get the wrong impression that there's more to the date then that, well, that's hardly your fault, is it?" she chuckled.

"Damn," Daria swore. "You really DO take after Quinn." Daria sighed. "Alright...I'll try it." 


End file.
